


Marble and Gold

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, First Time, Golden Age, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-01
Updated: 2010-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a handsome pilot crashes on Paradise Island and meets an Amazonian princess, destiny is set in motion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marble and Gold

Diana was playing hoops and javelins with her sisters on the beach at sunset when it happened.  Two aeroplanes hove into view in the violet sky, smoke like white ribbons looping behind one of them as they dodged each other.  The vicious rattle of gunfire came to the Amazons as they stood on the golden sand and Diana shaded her eyes against the light of the setting sun to follow the fight.

"It's a Nazi and an American!"  she exclaimed to Mala, who was squinting beside her. 

Mala clapped her hands together as she watched, wincing as smoke billowed from the American plane.  "Oh, _why_ can't we help him, Diana?  Surely your mother _must_ see that this war--"

"--The Queen's word is that we are not to become involved with the affairs of man's world," Diana interrupted sternly.  "I am, in all things, a faithful subject of our Queen."

But her eyes never left the silver plane with the white star painted on its side.  The German plane was closing in on it fast.

The Allied plane suddenly climbed steeply, almost perpendicular to the ocean, pulling away just a little bit.  Then it turned, going into a free-fall, heading straight back at its erstwhile pursuer, guns blazing.  A gasp arose from the crowd of women as the Nazi plane disintegrated;  there were cheers and whoops from the beach.

"Hera, no, he can't pull up in time--"  Diana watched the American plane tried in vain to avoid crashing into the ocean, victory obtained at the price of its own survival.  The plume of water and smoke its impact made could be seen from the beach.  She found her hands clasped before her and her heart pounding as she stared at the spot on the horizon where the plane had gone down.

"He's gone, Diana."  Slowly Diana became aware her friend Venelia was tugging at her arm.  "Show's over.  We'd better report this to the Queen."

Diana and Mala moved slowly away from the beach, up the grassy slope toward the palace.

Diana looked back almost the whole way.

**: : :**

The next morning, Diana went running on the beach alone.  The rising sun turned the surf into fractured diamonds as she splashed barefoot, sometimes glancing out over the ocean.

She stopped dead when she saw it:  a piece of wreckage washing through the eddies and ripples.  Sunlight glinted from the silver of the wing, from the golden hair of the man clutching it.  As she drew closer, hesitant, the man let go of the wreckage and staggered through the surf to land.  His flaxen hair and pale golden skin dripped sea water as he staggered onto the beach.  _Like Aphrodite from the waves,_ Diana found herself thinking blasphemously, and stifled incongruous laughter.

The man turned and saw her, his pale blue eyes lighting, and Diana found herself unable to look away.  She stepped closer, and the pilot smiled and reached out a dripping hand to touch her cheek.  "Angel," he said faintly.  "Saved by an angel."

Then his feet went out from under him and he went face-down in the surf.  Threads of blood snaked into the water as Diana turned him over so he could breathe, dragging him to shore.

And that was how the Themysciran Guard found them when they arrived a moment later.

**: : : **

"You are my daughter and as such, you _must_ be held to a higher standard!"  Queen Hippolyta's voice was icy.  Princess Diana stood in front of her, hem still dripping salt water onto the marble floor of the throne room.  "How could you allow such a thing to happen, to _assist_ a man in stepping onto these sacred shores--"

"--Should I have let him die, Mother?"  Diana's voice was quiet and meek, but Hippolyta glared as if her daughter had struck her.  After a moment her shoulders slumped.

"No, Diana, of course not.  We are not murderers;  we just wish to be left in peace, away from man's world."  The Queen put a hand beneath Diana's bowed chin and lifted her daughter's face to her.  "What's done is done, Diana, and you acted compassionately, if not perhaps wisely."  The queen sighed as she removed her white mantle to wrap around her wet and shivering child.  "I just greatly fear that our time of peace and solitude is coming to an end."

**: : :**

Major Steve Trevor came to slowly.  He seemed to be in a tent of some sort, a pavilion made of silk and sheer gauze, delicate and breezy.  He groped to collect his thoughts and remembered:  the dogfight, the crash, the long night struggling to stay conscious in the cold waters, the beach...the impossibly bright blue eyes of the woman who had greeted him.  He tried to sit up and fell back with a groan as broken ribs refused to comply.

"Lie steady," said a cool voice near him.  He turned to find the vision from the beach sitting next to his bed.  "You've been badly hurt. Rest."

"Where am I?"  croaked Steve, his voice cracked by sea water.  "This island...it wasn't on the maps."

The woman held a cup of water to his dry lips and he drank thirstily.  "You've landed on Paradise Island, home of the Amazons."

Steve opened his mouth to say something witty, but a stab of pain flung him abruptly back into darkness and silence.

**: : :**

The "Amazons" isolated Steve on a small, steep-cliffed island off the coast, setting up a kind of bivouac for his rehabilitation.  He was cared for by five or six women in shifts, but one in particular he found himself looking forward to seeing:  his angel from the beach, Diana.

The fact that she was breathtakingly beautiful--her dark hair curling around her face, its sharp planes somehow perfected by the direct blue eyes--certainly was helping in his recovery.  But perhaps more importantly, she had a quick and agile mind and an insatiable thirst for talking about politics.  Arguing about them as well, he thought ruefully as he looked up at the billowing silken cloth over his head.  She had dismantled his arguments against women serving in combat with all the finesse of a trained debater.

Who _were_ these women, anyway?  How did they live on this island far away from the world?  From his tent entrance he had spied the white marble pillars and golden domes on the main island, and there was no way he could delude himself that this place was backwards or barbaric.  It remained a mystery and he dared not ask too many questions.

There was a rustle and Steve turned his head to see Diana entering his tent, clad in a white chiton with golden clasps at her shoulders.  Her dark hair was pulled into a cascade of ringlets on top of her head, and Steve felt his breath quicken at her beauty.  She sat down next to his cot and put a cool white hand on his brow.  "Are you well today, Major?"

It took a moment for Steve to find his voice.  "Better now."

A brilliant smile, completely lacking in coyness, at his transparent flattery.  Diana leaned forward, her perfect arms resting on her knees.  "Last time you were telling me about Kristallnacht.  I had heard of these Nazis, but I wish to know more.  Why do the people of Germany not stop them?  Is it possible they all approve of such barbaric actions?  I wish to know more of this.  I _need_ to know more."  Her pale eyes blazed like holy fire as she listened to Steve, interrupting sometimes in her Greek-accented English to ask for further elaboration or to express reservations.

Steve spoke for hours over the next few days, telling her of the evil acts of the Axis, the glorious promise of the Allies.  In later days, Diana would come to view his fervent patriotism with a rather more skeptical eye, but at the time his vision of freedom and equality lit a fire in her soul, a fire matched in the handsome young Major's eyes.

One day she asked abruptly, "What if I could convince Queen Hippolyta to aid the Allies?"  As he hesitated, she continued, "We could not attack the Nazis directly.  Hitler holds the Spear of Destiny, and we cannot breach its wards.  But if we could help you in other ways...even just with a few warriors..."

Steve couldn't help but laugh.  "Diana, dear, no offense...but I can't imagine a handful of women could make that big a difference."  He immediately regretted the condescension in his voice;  these "Amazons" had a fierce pride in their independence that he had no wish to mock. 

Diana just gazed at him, a small smile on her face.  "I'd like to show you something, Major.  Can you walk?"

"I can hobble," Steve said, pulling himself up on his injured leg.  He followed the woman out of the tent and to the edge of the cliff.  The wind blew in from the sea, sharp and salty, and turned Diana's hair into a glory of tumbling darkness.

Diana turned to him at the edge of the cliff, pushing wind-blown hair out of her face.  "Major Trevor, you've been very polite, but I can tell you don't take very seriously our claim to be Amazons."  Then she stepped forward and lifted Steve in her arms as easily as lifting a child.

Steve gaped into her beautiful face, entirely untouched by any strain in carrying a fully-grown man.  Her smile was as serene as the crescent moon.  "I can actually carry much more than this," she murmured.  "And..."

Steve only had time for the beginnings of a shout as she stepped to the edge of the cliff and off it.

The wind caught the two of them and lifted them high above the island, Diana's white chiton rustling like wings around them, her face calm and smiling into Steve's astonishment.  The island reeled below them as they flew--flew!  Steve suddenly sensed the strength in the hands carrying him, strength he had overlooked as they soothed his brow and brought him water.  _Angel...Muse...Goddess..._  "Dear God, Diana," he gasped over the wind, a rush of exhilaration filling him at her power, her glory..."This is magnificent!  You're magnificent!"  _What even one warrior like this could do for the cause of freedom..._ 

Diana's eyes kindled at his words and she brought her mouth to his, warm and sweet..._A goddess and a woman both_, Steve's mind reeled as her power lifted them together, making his soul soar to heights he had never imagined, to ecstasy he had never known he could feel, never known he needed.

**: : :**

He is so delicate beneath her.  She can feel his bones, fragile as seashells, under the skin as her hands bring him delight.  His hair is like a net of sunlight, his body light as foam on the sea.  _Aphrodite,_ she thinks to herself, dazed with joy.  He is like wrought gold, frail and shining, the unbreakable gem of his spirit blazing within him like a star sapphire.

Her pale thighs are against his tanned ones, marble and gold together.  He opens his eyes, the blue of them like a sea, drowning in the pleasure she gives him.  "I am yours," he says simply.

"And I am yours," she responds. 

It is the only vow they will ever need.  



End file.
